Members of Congress from the D.C. area are vowing to fight against sweeping efforts by President-elect Donald Trump’s new Department of Government Efficiency to eliminate government agencies and the jobs of federal workers.
Lawmakers from Maryland’s congressional delegation made it clear this week they are concerned about the plans of Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, who head DOGE.
The two entrepreneurs have said they want to make unprecedented cuts in the government workforce, with the help of the incoming Trump administration.
“There’s tremendous concern in all of our districts about what looks like a full-fledged assault coming on the professional civil service,” said Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin, of Maryland.
He noted there has been discussion among Trump’s supporters of replacing close to 50,000 civil servants with political appointees.
“People get hired by virtue of their ability to do an excellent job, not by virtue of their political party,” Raskin said.
Musk and Ramaswamy have a very different view of government workers, arguing they are largely unaccountable for policy failures and wasting taxpayer dollars.
They laid out their justification for DOGE in an editorial published Wednesday by the Wall Street Journal.
They argued that unappointed civil servants “view themselves as immune from firing thanks to civil-service protections,” calling the federal system “antidemocratic.”
“The entrenched and ever-growing bureaucracy represents an existential threat to our republic, and politicians have abetted it for too long,” they wrote.
They believe that Trump can start chipping away at the bureaucracy through executive action, noting the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled agencies can’t unilaterally impose various regulations.
In a recent interview with Fox, Ramaswamy said the president can “score some early wins” and then move on to more major reforms.
He acknowledged there will be pushback from some members of Congress as well as the federal agencies themselves.
But he believes the recent election shows the public “is on our side.”
“Most of the public understands their taxpayer dollars are not being well spent,” he said.
Ramaswamy said ultimately he expects “mass reductions” and that certain agencies will be “deleted outright.”
One of the agencies targeted to be eliminated by Republicans is the U.S. Department of Education.
“We will have our work cut out for us,” said Maryland Democratic Rep. Steny Hoyer, who has seen battles over federal spending in Congress for decades.
Hoyer said that the Maryland delegation will work to protect civil servants in their districts, because their positions are based on merit.
He noted they shouldn’t be subject to being replaced by “political hacks.”
Trump has indicated he wants to bring back Schedule F, which would allow agencies to reclassify certain federal workers, so that they could be more easily removed.
Ramaswamy has suggested that if government workers are forced to return to the office five days a week, many of them — possibly a quarter — would leave their jobs.
He argued that Trump has a mandate, since Republicans now have a political trifecta — the White House, Senate and House.
“If we don’t downsize the federal government now, it’s never going to happen in the future as well,” he said on Fox. “So this is a historic opportunity.”
